Elizabeth Burkett
Basic Information Liz spends most of her days two steps behind Alpha and slightly to his left, daring anybody to try something so she can demonstrate exactly how lethal she is. She does have a life outside her job, but only in the way that someone who is truly married to her work does. Her studio apartment is painfully tidy and largely undecorated - blank white walls, functional furniture, bare floors, a single stack of books that have been recommended by others. She loves beautiful things, but has never associated them with herself - the outside world is beautiful, transitory, and untouchable. Her physical appearance is as precise and sterile as one would expect from a person who spent large swathes of time with Alpha. Imprisonment/Deaths/Mutations Liz has impeccable aim - she can hit anything, from any distance, with absolute accuracy. (She can "hit" it in any sense of the word, too.) The problem is, she can't ever decide what to aim at if left to her own devices. Relationships She has an on-again, off-again "thing" with Zev, but she's not sure how serious it is - nobody's told her, after all. They have sex now and again, but she's never agreed to a date. Zev will occasionally drag her down to the bar, where she's been known to share a drink or two with Hero. When they're both off-duty, there's no harm in it, right? Her primary loyalty is to Alpha, who took her in and gave her purpose. Despite their closeness in age, she looks to him as a father figure, although there have been jokes that her reaction to him is more worshipful than filial. This may be a defense mechanism, a way of translating her affection for and loyalty to him into something that he will accept and appreciate. History No one knows where Alpha found her, or how he figured out her peculiar gift, and Liz herself doesn't remember. Life B.A. (Before Alpha, of course) is a series of vague blurs, occasionally crystallizing into a single still-frame image without context or explanation. She has been at his elbow constantly since shortly after he took over the City, though as Alpha has spent more and more time cloistered, he's taken to sending her out on very precise errands to gather information or bring something back. Shortly after he found her, they sat down and worked out a series of rules, guidelines, and directions that allow her to function from day-to-day, and operate with a certain amount of independence away from him. Occasionally she'll check in with him to get something updated or clarified. Liz and Zev interrogate Merrick Liz reports back to Alpha Liz visits the market, and meets Fortuna, Haunt, Alyss, and Anna, and ends up drinking with Hero Liz finds out that one of the Soulless is being wonky, and asks Zev and Wyatt for help Liz saves Alpha from the tribble infestation, and winds up with one as a pet. During the No Inner Monologue Virus, Liz invites Zev to dinner and ends up telling him her price. It goes better than she expected. Extras Off-duty, Liz is a slave to habits, rituals, and "the way things are done." She doesn't want anyone else to figure out that she's incapable of making decisions, and circumvents discovery by sticking to an ironclad routine. She's a person for whom "Tuesday is Taco Night" has the force of law, and each night's meal is prepared in precisely the same way with exactly the same ingredients every time. If she can't get an ingredient, she skips it - but there are no substitutions allowed. Alpha didn't think about her personal life much, so he gave her very little direction. As a result, she goes back and forth between having no personal life at all and being swayed by whatever whim of Zev's manifests itself as a demand or a suggestion, rather than a question. Her First Rule is "Keep the secret." The only person in the entire City who knows her mutation's price is Alpha, and he has told her to keep it that way.